IVI/IVI October 11, 3.0-M2-Sep

On the 11th of October, the IVI team released Tizen 3.0-M2-Sep for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI). This is the September 2013 monthly preview image that builds upon the Tizen 3.0 codebase and our next step towards the 3.0-M2 (EOY2013) and final 3.0 Tizen IVI releases (H2 2014).

This new preview features a 3.11.4 kernel (inc. support for Intel Bay Trail processors), Wayland (1.2) combined with a new and improved sample HomeScreen (ICO) that is now installed by default. A fastboot Splash Screen (psplash) has been added as well as a TTS engine (Festival), accessible from the Speech Web API as demonstrated by the new Saythis web app. Various applications have been upgraded such as Settings, MediaPlayer as well as some key middleware components such as Automotive Message Broker (ver. 0.10.1), dLeyna (DLNA), Murphy (Policy Manager). Particular attention has been given to various performance aspect of the stack; video HW acceleration has been enabled as well as WebGL. Boot time (to HomeScreen) has been significantly reduced and NFC WiFi-handover has been enabled.

Quick Start

There are two types of images that are created nowadays, one is for the more traditional HW platforms that have a BIOS and the second image is for platforms that only provide UEFI. Please refer to the table below to understand which image you should use.

Important note: Depending on the HW platform you are using, you may be faced with a black screen upon booting this new monthly preview, if that's the case please check out first this note below: HomeScreen not coming up on the screen.

Speech Recognition: Speech-recognition is a STT and TTS (newly added) framework that eases the creation of speech-enabled applications. The speech engine utilized for the actual translations is a plugin and can therefore be replaced by vendors allowing for greater flexibility without breaking existing applications that rely on the API exposed by this framework. Both PocketSphinx and Festival plugins are provided as part of Tizen IVI. It's important to note that both native and web applications can leverage this framework which will also collaborate with Murphy so as to give Murphy enough context to determine whether a particular application can be allowed to use the speech engine at that time or to give Murphy the possibility to enforce a particular policy related to that (i.e. radio is to be turned off when the driver speaks out a command).

Note: Speech-recognition contains some libdbus code that can be enabled with a build flag. In order to use this code the package has to be compiled with both –-enable-gpl and –-enable-dbus flags. These flags serve as a heads-up for anyone using this package that by using this feature, this package (and anything using it) becomes GPL. These flags are not used in the Tizen IVI builds.

MediaPlayer: An HTML5-based multimedia player application to play back audio, video content or view your pictures. It can also be controlled using voice-recognition.

Murphy policy manager: Murphy is a system-wide resource policy daemon, designed to do cross domain policy decisions in a configurable way.

Hands-Free dialer ("lemolo"): A BT HFP (Hands-Free Profile) dialer application that uses oFono and BlueZ to make and receive phone calls through a bluetooth-paired mobile phone. It supports both single and multi-party calls. Its GUI theme will also automatically be adjusted based on the system-wide Day/Night mode property.

dLeyna: dLeyna is an opensource project that provides high level APIs for creating DLNA enabled applications. As noted above, a new set of DLNA Web APIs are now available for HTML5 applications to access the various DLNA services.

SyncEvolution: SyncEvolution is a PIM (Personal Information Management) system that provides a unified address book and PBAP synchronization with your phone address book.

SmartDeviceLink: SmartDeviceLink (SDL) end goal is to provide an expandable software framework to both mobile application developers and automotive head unit creators for the creation of brought-in applications that appear integrated onto a head unit.

HomeScreen: Sample ICO HomeScreen that was contributed to Tizen IVI by Toyota. It also provides a custom Wayland shell (ico_ivi_shell).

Virtual Machine

Important Note: This monthly preview does not work under VMware®, the input subsystem is not functioning as expected. This is being tracked here: TIVI-2025. There is a workaround described below.

Intel Bay Trail processor

Nexcom recently announced their VTC1010-IVI platform based on the Intel® Atom™ processor E3827 (formerly known as Bay Trail). While the Tizen IVI team has not yet conducted full Q&A testing on these production systems, we expect to be in a position to fully support those in the very near-term.

Tips, tricks and other workarounds

Going back to the standard Weston desktop shell

This new monthly preview comes with the ICO HomeScreen pre-installed. It is more feature-rich than the standard desktop shell and could have some unexpected effect on some applications. If you want to go back to using the standard Weston desktop shell, here is how you can do this:

$su (password is 'tizen')
#zypper rm ico-uxf*
#systemctl reboot

HomeScreen not coming up on the screen

The ICO HomeScreen is configured to only use the HDMI1 video output in portrait mode. That may not work on your platform if the HDMI numbering is different or if you are using a VGA screen. If that's the case, the sympton is that you don't see anything coming up on the screen. Here is how you can resolve this:

Switch to a console: Ctrl-Alt-Fx (where 'x' is >= 3)

Log on: root (password is 'tizen')

Check what are the outputs on your system: journactl -a

Tip: This is a full log of your system so do a search for HDMI (/HDMI) to find out what the right number is for you.

Note: The ICO HomeScreen is designed and configured to fit nicely on 1920x1080 screen in portrait mode so unless you use such configuration, the HomeScreen will not fit your screen real estate correctly.

Using a VGA screen

The VGA output is disabled by default in the /etc/xdg/weston/weston.ini file that is installed by the ICO HomeScreen. If you wish to use a VGA screen, you will need to re-enable it by commenting out the mode=off line in it.

Disabling the LVDS output for the Nexcom VTC7120 platforms

By default, the LVDS output is active and weston will use it even if no screen is attached to it which will make part of the desktop invisible to you. We therefore recommend disabling the LVDS output by adding the following section to weston.ini if you do not use it:

[output]
name=LVDS1
mode=off

Running Tizen IVI 3.0-M2-Sep in VMware Player

There is a known issue when running Tizen IVI 3.0-M2-Sep preview in VMware Player (see TIVI-2025) which leaves you with no input mechanism (pretty annoying actually...). A new kernel configuration is needed to address this (which entails re-enabling a couple of drivers), in order to make it as easy as possible to most people, I have prepared a new kernel with the fix incorporated, here is how you can install it:

How to start a WebApp

Here is how you can start a WebApp (such as GhostCluster, MediaPlayer, Settings, Saythis):

Launch weston-terminal

Run wrt-launcher -l to list all the WebApps that are available (i.e. installed)

Run the app of your choice using the App ID: wrt-launcher –s <app_ID>

How to start a WebApp via SSH

Here is how you can start a WebApp (such as GhostCluster, MediaPlayer) remotely using SSH:

Login as user 'root', with the password 'tizen'

Set a password for the 'app' user: passwd app

Login as user 'app': ssh app@hostname

Run wrt-launcher -l to list all the WebApps that are available (i.e. installed)

Run the app of your choice using the App ID: wrt-launcher –s <app_ID>

Setting up Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

The 'settings' application still need some work so in the meantime you can to set up your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections from the command-line. Please install the connman-test (for WiFi) and bluez-test (for bluetooth) packages to that effect

Launch weston-terminal and run su - to become root (password: 'tizen')

Run zypper refresh && zypper in bluez-test connman-test

exit to return to the 'tizen' user

The various BlueZ-related scripts are put under /usr/bin

The various ConnMan-related scripts are put under /usr/lib/connman/test

Many people may be familiar with some of the scripts provided by connman-test (installed in /usr/lib/connman/test/). Most of the functionalities provided by those are also now conveniently provided by connmanctl which is installed by default. We have also started a (still) short wiki page that gives various Connman tips and tricks on how to set up connections on your system.